


Because, This is What You Do

by Gravity_Sun



Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-11
Updated: 2013-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-29 02:23:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/999742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gravity_Sun/pseuds/Gravity_Sun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max dies.</p>
<p>Alec doesn't handle it well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Because, This is What You Do

**Author's Note:**

> Written in the style of Marty McConnell, specifically after her poems "Survival Poem #17" and "The Fidelity Of Epitaphs (20 Days Later)". If you are not familiar with these poems, I highly recommend you read them, read them again, and then start saying them aloud.

 

Because, this is what you do.

 

Get up. Blame the cold for the stiffness in your bones and the red in your eyes.

Watch Isabele and Jace argue over the table. Pretend to laugh because it could be worse. Here, it's all burned toast and boxers on the floor and it could be yesterday, or the day before, when the missing got so bad you cried in the corner of the library, cradled with your knees to your chest to muffle the sound.

Or yesterday, when you wrote, drafting epitaphs all morning. When you dug out a sharpie and wrote promises along hidden portions of your skin. _I'll avenge you. I'll fix this. Everything will be okay._

Shower. Turn the water so hot it burns and the marker ink rolls down your skin like black poison painting the tub. Soap, shave shower, rinse, move.

Cancel on training with Jace today. Lie and spend the day in your room, idly staring at a book you've never read and count the ways it could be worse. You could've been there. Could've watched the hammer hit his head and break his skull. Could've felt him die in your hands.

The fire could've claimed him. Burned him and the house to nothingness. Nothing left to mourn but ashes and you can't help but think that that would somehow be better. That that would be somehow more simple because instead of faceless ashes you got an ashen white body and a coffin so light your heart almost convinced you it was empty.

Grow angry, scream. Throw things. Break things. The lamp, the door. Because it _'isn't fair'_ , you think. Standing amidst the glass shards and torn curtains and thrown open drawers. It isn't fair that he died and you're still here with memories of his laughter and shouting at him for waking you too early or the time you scolded him for running away. For climbing to high because the branches would give and they did and you caught him and held him so tightly he protested.

Say nothing as Jace helps you fix the door and sweep up the glass. Look down and burn it the way your father taught you. Sweep and move on. Toss away the broken shards of your life and learn to float on the pain. This is your life. Your burden. Never forget it.

Remember a black haired boy in a field of wheat, chasing grasshoppers and choke down any sadness that comes with it.

 

You know where to go from here.


End file.
